VALUSKA

Commedia tragica in twelve tableaux, one act, in Hungarian, with Hungarian and English surtitles

There is about to be a major moment in Hungarian music history: in the new season, the OPERA will present the first opera written in Hungarian by Péter Eötvös, celebrating the 80^th birthday of the internationally renowned composer in January 2024. The work is a musical theatre adaptation of László Krasznahorkai's novel The Melancholy of Resistance. The story may already be familiar from the film Werckmeister Harmonies, but, of course, the composer approaches the topic from a different angle compared to the director of the film, Béla Tarr. “Valuska, a young man with a pure heart, becomes a victim of a manipulative society in the shadow of a stuffed whale”, says Péter Eötvös about his thirteenth opera, which was commissioned by the OPERA and whose predecessors have been performed all over the world. Many of them have already been seen by Hungarian audiences. His works Three Sisters and Love and Other Demons have previously been staged at the Opera House. Valuska is directed by Bence Varga.